We're taking a moment here at the National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting to hit the break key and review what we've accomplished in the past two years with the help of our staff and volunteers, the funding from foundations and the support from the farsighted and adventurous throughout the news profession.
Begun in 1989 by the Missouri School of Journalism, the institute was revitalized in 1994 after the school and Investigative Reporters & Editors joined forces to promote computer-assisted reporting (CAR) through expanded training and services.
When I arrived in February 1994, there were two graduate assistants at NICAR. Since then, our full-time and part-time staff has increased to a dozen. We have a training director, several graduate assistants, a World Wide Web site administrator and web designer, an assistant systems administrator, and an office coordinator. We also share support staff with IRE, of which NICAR is an administrative division, including a bookkeeper, office manager and seminar coordinator.
With this staff, we have conducted more than 125 seminars throughout the United States for more than 5,000 print and broadcast journalists during a two-year period. With funding from the Freedom Forum and Knight Foundation, we have initiated a minority training program.
Our database library has increased from a handful of offerings to more than 20 different databases that we have distributed to more than 90 news organizations. And we have done data work for organizations ranging from small newspapers to national TV magazines.
On the paper publishing side, this newsletter's circulation has more than quadrupled from 80 subscriptions to more than 400. We also have published a book on CAR stories, "100 Computer-Assisted Stories," that shows how such stories are done, and IRE and NICAR supported my work on a basic primer on CAR, "Computer-Assisted Reporting: A Practical Guide," which is published by St. Martin's Press.
While all this activity was going on, we have developed online offerings for the profession with the financial help of IRE supporter Greg Hillman and the Freedom Forum. You can go to our web site at http://www.reporter.org and find your way not only to NICAR's and IRE's web pages (where you can obtain sample data and do research on investigative reporting), but also to web pages for minority journalists' organizations. You can also join our listservs to discuss CAR and investigative reporting. In the next few months, we hope to unveil new web pages that will provide even more help to journalists. Most important, we have stuck to our goal of working with other groups to form alliances to do better work. In the past two years, we have offered seminars with Northwestern University, New York University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Maryland and Indiana University. We worked, too, with many other societies including the Society for Professional Journalists, the Society of Environmental Journalists, and the Unity Conference. We hope to raise our work to new and higher levels in the coming months with your help and the continued financial support of the profession and its foundations. If you have suggestions for the future or observations about the present, please send them to brant@nicar.org And thanks again from NICAR for a terrific two years.